Into the Mystery of a New Language

Desafortunadamente. Eight syllables … des a for tu nad a men te. It’s like champagne bubbles on your tongue … all fizzing together to mean unfortunately.

Words like desafortunadamente thrill me … even when they make me feel like I’m reciting the Gettysburg Address in a normal conversation. Will the listener pay attention long enough for me to get to the finish line of this one word? Plus, that marathon word drains all the thoughts that were supposed to follow it. Unfortunately, … uh … what? Oops, it’s gone.

Studying Spanish is fun, frustrating, exciting, rewarding, humbling, exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time. Interestingly, I’m also learning more about English … and forgetting how to spell … especially all those words with double letters since Spanish seldom uses them … except for “ll” which used to be considered a separate letter, now it's just a letter combination pronounced like  “y."

Sun and Moon

There are many words in Spanish that are beautiful … to my ear and my tongue. Here are just a few ... the accents are important and marked with ( ) and (i) is pronounced as a long (e) … 

al (men) dra … almond 

seren (i) dad … serenity

(jun) tos … together ... j sounds like h ... (hun) tos

fan ta (sí) a … doesn’t that sound much more alluring than “fantasy”

o ja (lá) … hopefully or “God willing!”

man da (ri) na … mandarin orange

zan a hor (i) a … isn’t that better than carrot?

(al) ma … soul

Mi alma shouts ojalá when I have a fantasía about eating una mandarina with almendras. Try it. It’s like face yoga. 

Learning a different language seems to be changing the way I think. The difference between “I like to read” and “Me gusta leer” is subtle but intriguing. “I like to read” is a closed statement, a fact, a period. If there is a follow up question, it would probably be, “What do you like to read?"

“Me gusta leer" means that reading is pleasing to me. It’s more of an open statement, with a comma, inviting a different conversation … “Why does it please you?”

Me gusta esta nueva idioma. I like learning this new language for many reasons … I like the sounds, I like the feeling of having my brain tangled as I search for words and phrases, I like seeing the veil thin between me and the thoughts and words of others. 

 

house

 

 

Me gusta la sensación de ser una principiante. I like the feeling of being a beginner, of having beginner’s mind. Especially at this stage of life when so much is already done, known, or experienced, learning a new language opens up nooks and crannies in my mind that I didn’t know existed. 

 

It's the "thin thighs in thirty days" thing.

 

Ojalá, tengo sufficiente tiempo y energía para continuar.  I hope I have enough time and energy to continue. When I began this language journey, I had a goal. Somewhat like “thin thighs in thirty days,” I wanted to “be fluent as soon as possible.” 

I now know I will never be fluent in the sense of being a native Spanish speaker. However, I intend to become functional. I want to be able to have conversations in Spanish. I long to be able to hear stories from people who have lived completely different lives and who see the world in ways I’ve never experienced. 

Desafortunadamente, I started late on this journey.

Fortunadamente, all the time I have is mine to spend as I wish. 

 

What a gift! 

¡Qué un regalo!

 

 

Confessions of a "Fast Learner"

From collection of 85 -eria words

I was always a fast learner. New information comes into my brain quickly and makes connections and linkages that give me insights … at least long enough to take the test, make the grade and then let all or most of it drain away. Over the years, I came to think of my mind as a sponge, soaking up information only to let it flow out almost as fast as it flowed in.

For most of my life, and especially in school, fast learning was enough; I seldom needed the information learned in one class to succeed in the next one, and, if I did, I could always quickly relearn it … and then reforget it.  However, over time I began to wonder why some of my friends and colleagues, who didn’t necessarily display that fast learning thing, seemed to remember more than I did, seemed to be able to recall information they needed to make decisions, understand the workings of things and systems, and even just talk about the movie they saw last month (or even last week, if I’m honest).

 

None of this caused me any great problems until I decided to study Spanish seriously. For twenty-five years I had been non-seriously attempting Spanish and failing. Adult-ed courses dropped by the wayside like summer flies on a window sill. Spanish books, tapes, CDs, and Internet programs provided me with my own technology timeline leading to nowhere.

I decided there was only one thing I hadn’t tried … language immersion in a Spanish-speaking country. So, I made my reservations and headed off to San Miguel de Allende only to have that illusion pop like a rainbow soap bubble in the sun. Being in a classroom taught by a native Spanish speaker and surrounded by the language in the streets and stores produced no magic. The classroom bored me and the forced efforts to speak without vocabulary to speak with only frustrated me. The streets enchanted me but dropped language into my brain drip by tiny drip without creating a coherence or understanding.

I switched to a tutor who handed me a workbook and led me through charming but largely uncomprehended conversations. I worked the boring workbook. I studied and when I could study no longer, I walked the streets, picking up more disjointed words. I started reading what I could, writing what I could, and endlessly wondering why so very little was sticking … what was wrong with me?

Then, I discovered Google Translate. A more flawed guide to a foreign language you may never find … but it was there 24/7 and it gave me instant feedback. At the time, I did not know how bad it was, I just knew that if I put something into it, it gave me something back, instantly. I started writing sentences in Spanish and putting them into GT. Instantly I could see mistakes … wrong words, wrong pronouns, wrong word order, wrong verb tense … wrong, wrong, wrong!

I fell in love with GT. It didn’t tell me I was stupid … it told me that I didn’t yet have it right and it was infinitely patient while I tried this or that or went off on a Google search to find someone who might have an answer for me. Somewhere in that process, I discovered 123teachme.com and fell into a conversation with the developer of that very helpful site. He told me something that changed everything. He said that most students fail to achieve their new language objectives.

OMG!  If most people fail at something … at anything … there is something wrong with the system not the individuals trying to use the system. Maybe it wasn’t me … maybe it was the way I was learning. Maybe school had been one long experience of learning the wrong way. Perhaps … just perhaps ... there might be a better way?

That’s my new quest … and, so far, I’m finding some incredible stuff … stuff I wished I had learned in kindergarten … or at least by grade 2 or 3 … however, at least now I have some new tools to apply to the project of learning Spanish and am developing some confidence that I can reach my objective in that lovely language.

I will be sharing techniques as I learn them and experience how well they work on my own learning project.  Below is the first one and más tarde (more later …. ;-)

FIT: Focused Interval Training* … this is definitely not new but in our over-stimulated, multi-tasking world, it is worth dusting off and applying to anything you want to learn. Plus it’s just about as simple as anything you can possibly do … Set aside a specific length of time for focused learning … 25 minutes, 30 minutes - turning off email, phone and all distractions. Take a 5 minute break afterward. (*also known as The Pomodoro Technique).

There is even an app that helps you do this … 30/30 … here’s a write-up about it ...

 

30/30: An App That Won't Let Your ADD Get the Best of You

Do you ever get lost in a project and wonder where the time went? If so, you should consider downloading 30/30, an app that keeps you on task.

What does it do?

It lets you set up a list of various jobs, each with a designated amount of time to complete them. Start the clock, and when it runs out, it will tell you to move onto the next thing.

Why do we like it?

30/30 helps you focus in a clean, colorful interface that you can control with gestures. Say, hypothetically, you tend to get lost down a YouTube rabbit-hole (not that any of us knows anyone like that). You could say you want to spend 30 minutes looking at videos followed by an hour working on your taxes. It alerts you when its time to move on so you don't waste too much time.

Idylling About ...

Reflections

Sometimes change comes in demitasse cups … sometimes it floods your world with Big Gulps.  The past several months have been of the Big Gulp variety as a new love entered my life, I sold my home in Arroyo Grande and began to live on the edge of a breeze, drifting here and there like a milkweed seed.  In between the lovely, weightless moments have been surges of terror, insecurity and a mad grasping for something … anything … that would make me feel some sense of control.

Gradually, I'm settling down, releasing the need to know what's coming next, letting go of expectations and thoughts of what life *should* be like.  At my age, there's no longer time to worry about what the world thinks, what the world expects, what the world deems "right."  The new love in my life handed me a platter of possibilities and said pick what you want … what you really want.  It's frustrating to realize that I'm not sure I know.  Even now … here in my seventh decade ... I still have to stop and think: do I really want this (whatever it is) or am I just operating on past conditioning?

My life no longer looks "normal." I don't have a "home" in the standard sense. I'm not married, employed, working to make the world a better place or even baking cookies for my grandchildren. I have almost nothing to hang my ego and identity on. If someone should ask me what I do, I'd stammer helplessly for an answer.  For the first time in my life I may be more of a "being" and less of a "doing."

In two weeks I will head off to Mexico to fulfill a dream I've had for most of my adult life … to learn Spanish.  It's a dream I've launched in fits and starts, taking Spanish 1 probably a dozen times or more, always convincing myself that I would never be really good at a second language so it was pointless to try.  Now, I've decided I don't care where I wind up, I just want to revel in a new language.  So, for seven weeks, I'll be in an intensive language course … four weeks in San Miguel de Allende (an art community in central Mexico), then three weeks in Playa del Carmen (on the beach in the Yucatan).  And, then, just for good measure a week in Merida, the capital of the Yucatan where wandering the streets will be my classroom.

As I've been thinking about this trip, I knew I wanted to blog about this adventure … therefore, I started looking for a new blog title and came up with Idylling About... with the idea of wandering about with little direction in a peaceful, joyful manner. A merger of "idle" and "idyll" building on the dictionary definition of idyll as a noun meaning an extremely happy, peaceful, or picturesque episode or scene.

Turning that noun into action yielded "idylling" -  joyfully living with little structure and forethought while wandering through art, love, imagination, spirit, peace, transformation, poetry, metaphor, connection and conversation. 

You're invited to join me and add your comment about how you are idylling through life.